


No Good Deed

by Penknife



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Genre: Banter, Comfort, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: Claiming to own L3 seemed like a good way out of a bad situation, but Lando's beginning to regret it.





	No Good Deed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artemis1000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/gifts).



> Written as a treat for Artemis1000 in the Chocolate Box exchange.

L3 is stalking her way up the _Millennium Falcon_ 's ramp, and Lando is attempting to frame some kind of apology that isn't _I'm sorry for preventing you from being painfully disassembled._

"I'm not yours," L3 snaps.

"I know that," Lando says. The local scavengers had been expressing way too much interest in scrapping her for parts, and he hadn't liked their odds in a straight-up fight. "But the only thing they were going to hear was 'that droid is mine, and I will see that you spend a long time in a detention facility if you touch her.'"

"I am _not_ yours."

"I _know_ that," he says, less patiently. "If you'd rather go two on ten next time, give me some warning, and I'll wear something I don't mind bleeding on. The stains do not come out." 

"If they'd been trying to scrap you for parts, somebody would have stopped them."

There are plenty of planets where that wouldn't be true, but saying that probably won't help. "I stopped them, and I am getting nothing but grief about it from you."

She isn't looking at him. "Are you expecting me to thank you for pretending to be my organic overlord?"

Lando is about to say that it would make a nice change for her to thank him for anything, and then he gets a better look at her. If she were human, or anything close, she'd be shaking with fury and the adrenaline rush of a close call. Her wiring doesn't work that way, but there's still something jerky and ungraceful about the way she's moving that makes him stop wanting to argue. 

He thinks she would have been in real trouble this time if he hadn't been around, and maybe she even knows it, but she's still more angry than scared. That may be because she's programmed herself to react that way, but he still appreciates her style. 

"You know the world is the way it is," he says. 

"It doesn't have to be," she says, and that's where they differ, but this is not the moment to argue with her on this point. 

"You saw I backed you up." She's backed him up in situations where someone would have been happy to take him apart. They are supposed to be a team, but there are days when he thinks L3 is not by nature a team player.

"We could have taken them," she says.

"Baby, two on ten," he points out. "You're the astromech, you do the math."

"The odds aren't everything," she says.

"I can't argue with that," he says. She is the most improbable person he has ever met. "Anything I can help with, here?" He doesn't see a scratch on her. 

"I thought I was here to serve you."

"Are you ever going to let that go?"

"Check my left shoulder, it doesn't feel right," she says, rolling her neck. 

Lando doesn't think anybody actually touched her. He runs his hands over her shoulder, gently, not finding anything out of place. He's not sure whether it's possible for her to hurt the way a human might hurt, when the adrenaline high of a fight turns into the inevitable crash. He thinks maybe she just wants to tell him what to do and have him do it.

He strokes his thumb across the metal as if he could calm her that way, and maybe he can. If she were human, he'd coax her back to lean against his shoulder and take comfort from that, but instead he keeps on doing what he's doing, tracing the metal lines of her shoulder, feeling it warm under his hand. He's not entirely sure which one of them he's doing that for. He's glad she's in one piece.

"You're good," he says finally.

"Thank you," she says. He could ask what she's thanking him for, but he doesn't really need to know.

"You're welcome."

"But we're going to do it my way next time."

"Does there have to be a next time?"

"You tell me," she says, and, yes, he imagines there's going to be a next time. The world is the way it is.

"We'll play it your way next time," he says. "Just try not to get us into fights we can't actually win."

"There's always some way to win," she says, and he thinks she might be right, but he thinks the way you win is to play the cards you've got, or at least the cards you've got up your sleeve. L3's approach to being handed a stacked deck is more like trying to set the deck of cards on fire.

"This is how we get into so much trouble," he says, but some part of him knows he wouldn't want her any other way.


End file.
